But after a time he gets tired of himself and his opinions— deadly tired. He begins to think even the jelly-fish stage of life is preferable to the clam’s. At least the former had a change once in a while, and he saw something of life. He wishes he were a child again—he means a jelly-fish.

But even a clam cannot grow backward. So he becomes a crawfish and goes sidewise. He evolves some ugly legs, shoulders his shell and his opinions and goes sidling forth to see the world again. Really, he is growing a glimmer of a principle to live by. He has builded him a shell which makes him impervious to most outside forces; he has grown tired of trying to enjoy himself; and he has actually made a start at doing something on his own account, uninfluenced by the without.

Good little crawfish! He is on a fair road to growing quite a backbone of his own. By and by, as exercise hardens his muscles and stiffens his backbone and limbers his little legs he will discard his ugly shell and walk out straight ahead, instead of crawfishing. He is growing a Principle to live by—the principle of self-expression. He is growing Wits as well as a back­bone and well muscled legs, to take him out of harm’s way and to enable him to gratify his own individual desires.

A man in the jelly-fish stage is sensitive on the outside. And he is so absorbed in these outer sensations that he is conscious of nothing within himself. His soul-center is as unsensitive as his circumference is sensitive. He has shrunk into himself so persistently that he has deadened and dammed the power which is meant to flow outward from his soul-center. He is therefore utterly unconscious of the law or principle of his own being.

His solar plexus is a hard knot and he is so used to it that he does not know it. He has cringed and cowered and shrunk into himself until his solar center, his soul-center, is in danger of petrification. Life is a dull ache, and the harder the ache the tighter he shrinks inward.

Poor little man, he would better brace up and be a clam; or a crawfish; or better still, a man with a backbone that holds him up straight and leaves his solar center free to expand and fill him with vim and gumption to stand other men’s buffets and carve a path of his own out into the Free Country where he can do as

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